Nothing is Permanent; Everything Changes
In her very first podcast and the only one I ever listened to, Brene Brown said, we are meaning-making creatures. I wrote it down in Sharpie on a piece of paper and shoved it into a notebook, rediscovering it months later and feeling once again that gut-punch that comes with hearing something new-and-also-so-obvious articulated by someone else. Meaning-making creatures. Of course.
Particularly this year, I find myself looking for and assigning meaning to everything; trying to understand how to exist in this constant, pervasive state of uncertainty. I’ve been telling my friends that my new baseline for existing is Mild Existential Crisis. You can chuckle - I do - but also it’s true.
As I am a meaning-making creature in a constant mild existential crisis, it will not surprise you to know I’ve also spent a lot of time examining my past. I’m an elder millennial, so navel-gazing comes naturally to me, and I’ve been replaying over and over various moves, friendships, big events, little events: I’m also 36, so there’s plenty to dive into.
Do you know the story Eleven by Sandra Cisneros? In it, a little girl turns 11, which is not just a new age, but an accumulation of all her ages before that age. The story says that growing old is “kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree trunk,” and so when I look back at various part of my life, I like to imagine I’m staring at that one exhibit in that one natural history museum (is it New York’s?) that has the slice of the oldest tree to ever live and die.
How do your past selves feel about where you are now? Happy? Satisfied? Proud? Surprised?
Mine feel a little smug right now and that annoys me sometimes.
When I was very young, my mom wrote an application for me to attend pre-school. I don’t remember all the details (though she likely has it still so maybe I’ll re-read it), but one thing she said was that I liked to hang back, observing carefully before joining a group. She said I had an “old soul,” something countless people have said to and about me for my entire life. I think some people think this is a great compliment; I think it’s no more than an observation.
In 1998, I wrote in a journal that I’d like to live in California one day. I have no memory of that desire, but I wrote it down so it must have been true. I didn’t find that journal entry until I’d been living in California for a few years and upon seeing it, I had the same feeling I got when Brene Brown called us all meaning-making creatures. Whump! And - of course.
In 2003, I made a time capsule video with my best friend where we made predictions about our lives in 10 years, when we would be fully formed, 28-year-old adults. Hers were highly specific and hilariously inaccurate; they were everything you’d expect an 18-year-old high school senior to predict about herself in the coming decade. When it was my turn, I got this detached, thoughtful look on my face, and I said I felt confident I would not be married or have kids. That I would probably live in New York City for a while but then maybe I’d go out to California. It was unsettling how accurately my younger self laid out my future. The only thing I got wrong was going to grad school.
When I moved to Los Angeles eight-and-a-half years ago, people asked me if it was “for good” and I never knew how to answer. If I said no, they became dismissive and assumed I was playing out some temporary fantasy and that of course I’d come back East when I was “done.” If I said yes, people felt calmer, but I knew it was a lie.
The first book I read upon arriving in Los Angeles was a devastating memoir called Let’s Take the Long Way Home, by Gail Caldwell. Near the end of the book, she says that “the universe insists that what is fixed is also finite,” another one of those gut-punch-of-course statements. Everything changes, nothing is permanent. Of course.
A few years ago, I decided to commit to living in LA, to put down “roots” because I didn’t feel like I had those anywhere else. This year, my past selves are all feeling a little smug because they’ve known all along that I won’t be “rooted” the same way others might be. This supposed old soul of mine has been patient with me as I’ve toyed with the idea of staying in one place forever, quietly and kindly coaxing me back into the understanding that people don’t stay the same forever, so why should their geography be any different?
If this sounds like some cryptic moving announcement, I’m sorry to disappoint you: It is not. Rather, it’s the simple start of exploring where I might go next. Maybe an old journal entry already knows.